Reviews tagging 'Rape'

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

17 reviews

bababookmatt's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This is a character driven book. The protagonist, Judas Coyne, is an aging, pessimistic, misogynistic rock star. Not a character that typically elicits sympathy for me. However, behind the plot we do see growth, and by the end he calls the women he dates by their name, and not just the American state he met them in. Without loving him, he felt real, and earned my respect. The relationship dynamics are excellent. The horror component was a little ho-hum; a ghost haunting. Judas and his entourage are being haunted by a ghost and Hill doesn’t waste time convincing the reader it’s a haunting as opposed to mental illness, natural phenomena, etc. I appreciated this. It’s established and not something that needs doubting or suspicion. There’s a snuff film that Judas owns that is very unsettling, and while it’s mentioned a few times, I struggle with finding how it fits in to the larger story. This didn’t bother me, but I found it to be a loose end.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Drug abuse, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Rape, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Self harm, Violence, Abandonment, Child abuse, Suicide, Car accident, Death of parent, Drug use, Sexual assault, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship

outofthepinksky's review

dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident, Medical trauma, Pedophilia, Rape, Blood, Self harm, Child abuse, Death, Gore, Violence, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Fatphobia, Suicide, Animal death, Drug use, Gun violence, Domestic abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Gaslighting, Cursing, and Death of parent

gellyreads's review

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I really loved this novel's depiction and imagery of ghosts (the blackout eyes is super haunting and creepy). I also found one scene in this to be fairly disturbing and will make me hesitate to recommend this to anyone. Not to mention the other dark material that is covered in this book.

This book heavily features child abuse, molestation, grooming, age gap relationships, and the dark scene in question involves adults but a mix of sex and violence in a way that made me have to put the book down and walk away it was so disturbing

 
The ending both did and didn't feel desired, and the "familiars" idea I feel like could've been dealt with more. But I had a lot of fun reading this one and am excited to read more of Hill's work. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Sexual assault, Violence, Gore, Rape, Pedophilia, Emotional abuse, Animal death, Sexual violence, Torture, Child abuse, Sexual content, and Gun violence

Moderate: Suicide attempt, Gaslighting, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, Death, Domestic abuse, Suicide, Self harm, and Death of parent

wulnerable's review

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Mental illness, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Terminal illness, and Chronic illness

Moderate: Schizophrenia/Psychosis and Gaslighting

Minor: Rape and Suicidal thoughts

ripxw's review

dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Animal death, Pedophilia, and Incest

Moderate: Death, Suicide, and Rape

ctmy04's review

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Suicide, Injury/Injury detail, Rape, Sexual violence, Incest, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, and Child abuse

audioaxolotl's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Sexual content, Rape, Murder, Child abuse, Misogyny, and Physical abuse

briyabish's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Murder, Addiction, Incest, Rape, and Suicide

sammiterp's review

dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Animal death

Moderate: Child abuse and Rape

morganpearcy's review

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.5

I am a horror fan. I hated this book pretty much from start to finish. It is very obvious that the author is attempting throw in a lot of big, scary, challenging and shocking topics to make the book seem complex and dark - but that’s all a mask for 1 and 2 dimensional characters and an author who lacks the imagination and lived experience to give the story any real depth. It was as if the author watched some Law and Order Special Victims Unit episodes and decided one night to sit down and write what is, in essence, a toxic cishet masc hero fantasy - in response. There’s a lot of potential in the overall theme and plot but it just never reached any sort of maturity and completely missed the mark.

Let me explain. 

Things I enjoyed about the book: 

• There’s an unexpected twist.
• It’s a quick read.
• The scene where Anna yanks on Jude’s beard when he asks a dumbass question about why she thought beards were a liability in a fight.
• There’s an attempt (albeit inadequate) at a feel-good ending. 

Things I hated about the book:

• The ‘torture’ psychological, physical, etc was unimaginative, lacked creativity and was too phallic. Stop regurgitating TV show tropes and give us something real from your own darkness, dear author! 
• From page 10, I was rooting for the ghost and was thinking it would be a nice story to read where the universe can meet out some justice. I was looking forward to Jude’s death with some serious bloodlust. But no - about 2/3 of the way through there’s a twist and guess what?
  BOTH the ghost and the main character are, you guessed it - toxic freaking cishet men. There IS no one to root for.
  The women characters are woefully underdeveloped with zero personalities and I couldn’t root for any of them, either. This isn’t an antihero situation. The author is simply completely inadequate in attempting to make Jude a whole character. Read on for an explanation cuz I promised myself some bullet points.
• The main character is underdeveloped and there are a lot of distracting incongruencias.
  We jump from the intro of Jude as an eccentric musician with a flair for the macabre to Jude as caring but detached lover of barely-adult women to Jude as victim of childhood abuse to Jude as a dog lover who treats his pack like royalty, then back to Jude smashing piglets’ heads against the cement or shooting them with guns to live out a fantasy of patricide and focusing on how the pig’s heads sounded “like watermelons being smashed,” to defender of sexually abused women?! Then to man who would let their royal doggies be in pain in the back seat after having their legs smashed??
  None of this did anything to develop the character. You can’t include those kinds of details without some development. Yet, the author wanted to see what stuck and threw everything at the wall when it came to Jude.
• It’s not the point of the book, but the author simply doesn’t have the emotional scope, maturity or lived experience to write women SA survivors with any sort of depth or believability. Enough so that it’s distracting.
  Like when Jude beats up Mary Beth’s childhood sexual abuser and Mary Beth comes back to the car and becomes physically affectionate with Jude right off the bat. I can’t speak for every SA Survivor - but I am a Survivor myself. All of the women in my life are SA Survivors excepting ONE. And I have NEVER seen that response from an actual survivor upon seeing their abuser. Especially for someone so young, who hasn’t gotten help. That response wasn’t realistic. It simply played into Jude’s toxic masc hero fantasy and what the author obviously thinks people WANT to see. When in reality it was so distractingly incongruous it made me want to plot the author’s actual murder.
  It was as if the author, recent to writing the book, had a woman or woman-aligning person in his life reveal that they’re an SA Survivor, he fantasized about his response in his head and then had to find a place to slap that into a story somewhere cuz he’s justice-impotent.
• Again, the portrayal of women in general really exposes this author’s own implicit bias. I sincerely hope he doesn’t have a daughter. I don’t want to google it and find out. I’ll just hold on to hope.
• The ending was lackluster. Really,
  both Jude and the ghost should have died. Terrible, awful deaths. The only satisfying ending would have been Mary Beth riding off into the sunset, free of Jude and at peace with her freedom and ready to get some life experience so she doesn’t make the same mistakes shacking up with toxic cishet men again.

In the end, this would have been much better as a short story culminating in several bloody deaths across the board. This was NOT a satisfying read. It wasn’t triggering. It wasn’t disturbing. It was like reading a teenage boy’s post-SVU fantasy stretched thin like butter scraped over too much bread. Go elsewhere for your horror fix. This ain’t it. .5⭐️ for potential that was never realized. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Blood, Car accident, Child abuse, Addiction, Gaslighting, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Violence, Vomit, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Fatphobia, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Suicide attempt, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, and Toxic friendship